FOXBORO – So far, the Patriots young wideouts have seen a fair amount and handled all of it pretty well.

But they haven’t seen a thimbleful of what they’ll ultimately be exposed to when the regular season begins.

The Patriots offense is rhythm-based. Disrupt the rhythm, disrupt the offense. And disrupting the receivers is one way to accomplish that.

Tom Brady said Monday he’s trying to impress that on his teammates.

“You try to tell them (it’s going to get more complex),” he said. “You tell that to everybody. Coach tells that to all of us. Look, we’re not showing everything that we do, just like every other team’s not showing what they’re going to do. There are some things that you want to keep close to the vest and that’s just how football is. Part of it is putting together a game plan and you have things that you already know you do well that we practice that we don’t use. That’s just what football’s all about. And you do that every week, so you try to figure out what a team does well, what a team doesn’t do well, and then game plan around that.”

The preparation and guessing as to what the Bills or Jets may hatch on the Pats in the first two games is underway. But bucking percentages and upsetting tendencies is part of the chess game.

“You always have an idea of what they’re going to do,” said Brady. "It usually plays itself out pretty quickly when you get out on the field. There’s one thing about scouting reports and percentages and ‘this team is a 50 percent blitz team’ – but when you're out there playing, you're reacting.

“You can’t come off the field and go, ‘Coach, you said they were only going to blitz 15 percent of the time but they blitzed twice in a row.’ You know? You just go with what you see. So it’s good to have those things in your mind and study for them, especially on a week like this.”

The Lions are this week’s opponent which means the Pats will be facing one of the most stout defensive lines in football.

“There’s a lot of emphasis always put on the third preseason game and everyone’s going to play long,” Brady assessed. “But it’s just more of a – you feel like you're in a little bit of a game plan week and you want to go out and you want to do well. Even though it’s not going to overall count in your standings, obviously they’re all important games in preparation for the season.”

Tom E. Curran serves as Comcast SportsNet's NFL Insider. Read more from Tom here, or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.